I might have been visiting a prosperous farmer and his family in the Romagna, the scene was so comfortingly ordinary. Mussolini’s instincts were perfect. Here was the reality to which he returned for supper before spending the evening with his family. He did this as often as possible. Only towards the end, I heard, did he forsake these habits. By then he had become enamoured of Hitler and of Clara Petacci. His wife, she would remind me when we met that one time after the War when I went with Mrs Cornelius to Italy on a package holiday, had warned him against both. These enthusiasms were to conspire in his downfall. She was to write a touching memoir of her husband. Rachele was well aware of her value to him. She loved Mussolini with that deliberate lack of criticism her culture had trained her to prize as a virtue. And Rachele had his ear on almost any question. They made, he sometimes said proudly, a perfect fighting unit, like any Romagnan peasant couple used to the hardships of existence and the realities of survival.
She was a good-humoured woman with a happy smile. Far from being the philistine peasant of popular gossip, she was dignified, well educated and, when occasion demanded, grave. She kept her feet firmly on the ground. Hardly anyone from the Romagna region was not a socialist and an anti-cleric. Like parts of modern County Durham and Northumberland. Today whole villages are communist. But she was no more a bigot than if she had come from a particularly devout part of the country. Like her husband, she formed her own opinions and had good reasons for maintaining them.
As if I was a long-lost nephew, she took to me in a matronly way. Perhaps I filled an emotional void for her. The Mussolinis had recently lost Il Duce’s brother Arnaldo who had died of a broken heart on the death of his son Sandrino from leukaemia.
Finishing his meal rapidly, my Chief leaned back with a groan, which he tried to suppress. His wife ignored him, as if she was used to him. He winced, then grinned at me. ‘Indigestion,’ he said.
‘He’s a slave to it,’ she confirmed disapprovingly as the plates were gathered up. In fact, La Sarfatti told me, he had a serious ulcer. It had ruptured on the night he heard Matteotti had been murdered.
Mussolini stood up. ‘Meetings with ambassadors this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Come on, Professor. I’ll give you a lift back to the Villa Valentino.’
The boys begged me to stay longer.
Mussolini laughed at this. ‘Don’t you have school this afternoon?’
They begged me to come back in the evening. Bruno in particular had questions about stunt flying and Vittorio wanted to know how you got to act in films.
Signora Mussolini took charge of her sons. Perhaps I might like to come back some evening? She would make me a decent supper and we could watch some films. Her husband seemed perfectly content with this arrangement and so we left. I had enjoyed the visit. For me it was such a relief to be a guest in an ordinary household. Signora Mussolini had taken me under her wing, just as my old Aunt Genia had done years before in Odessa. I envied Il Duce his security. I was to pay several visits to the Villa Torlonia that year. They remain my happiest memories of Rome, in spite of the success I enjoyed there. I watched movies with Mrs Mussolini and I told her boys stories of my flying exploits. They called me ‘Uncle Max’ and she was pleased. Since Mussolini’s brother had died, she admitted, there had been an aching absence. She knew my work must be exhausting and was so grateful I could find time to spend with them. I would always, she said, be a welcome guest. I found it a great relief to know I had somewhere I could relax.
Many lack the character to carry the burdens of public life. The small pleasures of privacy, those intimate moments in obscure cafes, visits to galleries and entertainments, begin to turn into public appearances. And, of course, one’s personal life is subject to all manner of minor and irritating constraints.
We special ministers were not required to wear our uniforms at all times, but Il Duce made it clear how our public image was of paramount importance. As long as that was properly maintained, so was the state. Admittedly the Italian, English and American press was not unkind to us and one’s more intimate secrets were never aired - at least while one remained in office.
A case in point was poor, honest Augusto Turati, whom I met once or twice in the days before he was so thoroughly disgraced. He was a notorious pederast and paedophile, though an excellent and honest party secretary. While he continued to perform his public duties properly, such matters were never put before the people. However, when, shortly before my own appointment, Turati rather foolishly criticised the party as corrupt, he was replaced.
Everything came out then, of course. Mussolini, who had turned a blind eye to his friend’s escapades, was shocked at the details presented to him by the OVFLA, his special police department concerned with internal affairs. He never spoke of Turati again.
Il Duce himself was highly tolerant of human foibles, though he had few of his own. His view very properly was that while a man served the public effectively, there was no need to dig up the dirt. ‘After all,’ he would say, ‘there are few of us who haven’t something in our past which could be interpreted unfavourably.’ If this attitude led to certain party members occasionally taking advantage of their positions, it also meant that public confidence was maintained. Franklin Roosevelt said we had nothing to fear but fear itself. To a nation, said Benito Mussolini, morale was more important than money. Both agreed that image and prestige were far more valuable than gold reserves.
‘Gold is a fantasy,’ my friend would say, as we played upon our desert battlegrounds. ‘It has no more intrinsic value than this.’ And his stubby, powerful fingers would claw up a mound of sand from the table, dribbling it back over the ruins we had just made of a well-defended fort.
‘We give it power. It has none of its own. What makes gold and diamonds valuable are their artificial scarcity. The British and the Dutch, together with the Americans, control most of that trade, which gives them their power in the world. Alone, these minerals can feed no one, kill no one, help no one. They are a fantasy. Their worth is in their beauty. Yet nations destroy one another for gold. So if mankind is willing to struggle and die for one fantasy, why not another? America’s greatest asset is not in her raw materials, but in her exports of fantasy across the globe.
‘Without Hollywood, America would be like Canada. Nothing. Fabulation is America’s greatest skill. It comes from having so many mad religious visionaries settled there. These people who accuse me of drawing an inaccurate picture of Italy are merely those whose own fantasies are at odds with mine. What is an “inaccurate picture”? Is the Wild West an inaccurate picture? No, it is an idealised vision. Similarly I describe the best we can become as a nation. After all, how much of a line is there between “idealism” and “fantasy”? What we are interested in, Professor, is the power of the human will to create reality.’
A common theme in those days. Mussolini expressed it well. I realised how pathetic El Glaoui’s provincial dreams had been. Mussolini promised me I would soon have the engineering and material resources of the entire Italian Empire at my disposal. Meanwhile, we needed to shroud our plans in secrecy. Much as I wanted to shout my successes from the rooftops, I understood this. My oath to Il Duce put my life in his service. Here was a leader I could trust, whose intelligence, experience and vision made him my equal.
In common with some of the old squadristi, I grew a handsome beard. This gave me a fierce, aquiline appearance, like an engraving of one of my Cossack ancestors. It suited my new aggressive enthusiasm. Maddy said I looked like her pioneer ancestor, ‘Black Bob’ Butter, who had founded the family fortune. But I think she had an otherwise rather ambiguous reaction to what she called my ‘whiskers’. I was in two minds about keeping them until Mussolini himself complimented me on them.
Some three times a week, if he was in Rome, Il Duce came to see me at my offices. Guards would be positioned at the great double doors, with their carvings of warring centaurs and satyrs. Then we would discuss where we had left off, how we had won the last of our b
attles, what problems we had discovered, and so on. Now two Land Leviathans stood some two feet high on the game table, facing batteries of guns and larger numbers of troops, as we tried out increasingly complicated strategies. Upon arrival, my chief would unbutton his tunic — he called it ‘loosening my stays’ - and take a small cup of coffee. Then he would give his entire concentration to the matter in hand. I noticed with no great surprise, since Italy had been an ally of Britain in the Great War, he preferred to fill the enemy positions with German soldiers.
The amount of time I spent with Il Duce created a certain jealousy towards me. Some of his people felt overlooked. Notoriously, Il Duce was growing remote from his old friends, those who had been with him from the beginning. I heard this constant, if not very audible, grumble from among the ras, squadristi and gerarchia of the old guard, who had won the revolution but failed to absorb their leader’s lessons in statecraft. I heard similar complaints from several members of the Fascist Grand Council of which our Chief was head. If the American Revolution had been the work of a group of lawyers creating a land fit for lawyers to flourish in, then the Italian rebirth was chiefly in the hands of men who, like Mussolini himself, had been writers, publicists and journalists and who wished to create a nation where the writer was paramount. Their interest was not the day-to-day practical running of state affairs. They wished to maintain the morale of the country, in keeping the goals, as well as the achievements, of Fascism to the fore.
‘We must all march forward singing,’ said Turati, two days before his disgrace.
Mussolini did not want to hear such thoughts. He was forever repeating his view that while Italians thought of themselves as a nation of wine-loving opera singers they would never compete with the austerely successful Teutons, who, of course, had successfully conquered Italy after the Roman Empire withdrew to the East.
I think Turati’s reference to song was a mistake. I had attended one or two of his little parties. He was not an evil man. I believe he meant well for Italy. But, as Mussolini put it to me, ‘If you shove your fist up a little boy’s arse, the next hand you shake will smell of shit.’ By which Il Duce meant, I suppose, that inner corruption, which has nothing to do with sexual preferences or the enjoyment of the world’s other many pleasures, is more important than outer. He did not object to Turati’s symptoms of what Il Duce always called ‘the German sickness’, but the rule was, as Lord Joyce once said to me in the years when he was a simple commoner rather than a broadcaster, never to upset the ladies or frighten the horses. A rule the British would do well to remember, since they are no better than the others these days with their miserable kowtowing to every dusky ex-colonial who decides to castigate them in print. They were once the most successful Teutons in the world. Now, of course, we have the Americans.
Except when we were experimenting with our models or when on a whim he would occasionally decide to take me for a drive at the wheel of his huge Mercedes-Benz, zooming through the streets of Rome late at night, when little attention needed to be paid to lights or signs, Il Duce remained a very private man. He even checked himself from revealing that infectiously broad and charming smile. He habitually pushed his lower lip forward, firming his jaw against the cares of state, striking a deliberately belligerent pose by drawing his brows together in an almost comical scowl. The Bolshevist cartoonists loved to parody these expressions. Yet it was a conscious mask assumed for public appearances or for when he met a fellow Head of State. He could not afford to appear weak or indecisive. He was, after all, a superman. Our job was to support him in whatever positive ways we could. Therefore, to present another image of Il Duce was an act of national sabotage.
Turati had been one of the first to realise the importance of what came to be called ducisimo in promoting a national identity. Mussolini’s favourite theme, that Italians would only be respected abroad when they lost their image as a nation of maftosi and gigoli, made considerable sense. If other people see you as weak and foolish, there is a strong chance you will come to see yourself in this way. I have observed husbands, convinced by their wives that they are of a certain character, begin to behave accordingly. Women, of course, are masters of this sort of thing.
For this reason Mussolini treated Italians to a constant litany of Italian successes — in the Arts, the Sciences, the Humanities. All agreed that Italy led the world in style, for instance. It was imitated everywhere. No longer a nation of opera singers, but of the great condottieri, said Mussolini.
‘And this, Professore,’ he added, laying a firm hand upon my massive piece, ‘is what in the end impresses the world. Spectacular weaponry! Imagine the astonishment of the world when our futurist arsenal is revealed! The threat of war, Professor, brings many a great power to her senses. With machines like this we shall restore our African and our Eastern Empire without losing a single Italian life!’
The idea of war was still unpopular in Italy. Mussolini knew that if gains could be made with minimum losses his prestige would be even higher. His prestige and Italy’s prestige were indistinguishable and interdependent. For this reason we worked in secrecy. A few hints of our project were released to the press. I was not named, save as a famous American inventor advising Il Duce in his great plans. We were designing a homeland defence system which would be second to none. That system would make the Maginot Line seem old-fashioned and hopelessly ineffective. All European countries in those days were prepared for another war. Few had the heart for it. Mussolini argued that war was identified with the bloody folly of the trenches. He reminded me that British tanks first broke that appalling stalemate. The modern equivalent of flying cavalry, the tank, together with the fighting aeroplane, changed the rules of warfare.
The months went by. I enjoyed a status I had never known before. I had won respect, power, approval, the company of international men of affairs. I was party to all the political secrets of Europe. I knew only one small frustration. I should have anticipated it when dealing with a man of so many responsibilities. Il Duce would not let me know when we would be ready to put the prototype into production. Whenever I asked, he would offer me some reason for delaying. Then he would turn the conversation to some other invention of mine and insist that a model be commissioned. Thus the surrounding panelling of the boardroom’s walls was soon supporting shelves containing massive models of all my inventions. One of these was my long-range bombing aeroplane, the so-called ‘Flying Wing’, which contained much more extra fuel than ordinary aircraft. Although we were not yet giving employment to Italy’s engineers and steelworkers, we were making her toymakers rich.
Factories were not yet tooled up to produce the Land Leviathan’s full-size prototype, but over the next months our people brought to life a whole series of designs. I felt the euphoria I had known when I had worked on films, though ultimately, of course, we aimed to produce reality rather than illusion. I was disappointed Il Duce showed little interest in my more domestic inventions, such as the Radio Oven, but glad he remained enthusiastic about the rest, a product of what he insisted on praising as my ‘Fascist sensibility’.
‘These machines, Professor, are the expression in steel and cordite of our Fascist ability to crush all opposition in a single efficient action.’
He would walk up and down our long model room studying a multi-engined flying boat here, a dynamite engine there, a jointed aircraft carrier, a superfast mobile gun and so on. Set against suitable backgrounds, the models created an astonishing impression of reality.
To my intense relief even Margherita Sarfatti was banned from this inner sanctum to which only my Chief and myself were privy. Here Il Duce could let his hair down (figuratively, since he was going grey and was forced to shave his head). He could forget the cares of state. I was flattered that he wished to spend so much time with me. I sometimes wondered what my company offered him. I knew nothing then, of course, about his plans for the rapid expansion of Italian influence into Africa and the Balkans.
Although he loved to speak
in terms of war — the war for wheat, the war against crime, the war on terror, the war against alcoholism and so on — Mussolini’s nature did not lean much towards Mars. He enjoyed the game of it but had very little stomach for actual violence. He was probably never happier than when he stabbed the buttons of his radio-control, making my great War Ziggurat fire this way and that, rolling over infantry divisions, squadrons of cavalry, tanks, anti-aircraft guns, planes, forts and palm groves with mighty dignity. Sometimes Mussolini seemed a rather shy, almost timid person. When his defences were down he would ask quite naive questions with a direct, schoolboy innocence which made me admire and like him all the more.
I have heard it said that Fascism is not an ideology but a conflict of ideologies. If that were true, perhaps Mussolini mirrored that conflict just as much as he resolved it. While he controlled himself, he held Italy, with all her own inner conflicts, together. When his conflicts got the better of him, he was forced to make draconian decisions rather than find compromise. Then his power left him. Then Italy was lost.